Sunday afternoon on the farm

Blog,

 

It’s a sunny Sunday afternoon here at the farm, and I can hear the cows “mooing” anxiously for milking time.  Jess and Micayla are helping to round them up and will help Baba (Grandpa) Elliot to milk them by hand.  Baba Elliot and Gogo Regina (remember the Gogo whose friendship I won with a glass of coke?) live here on the property and help with farming, building and cleaning jobs.  They are very dear Zulu folks with big smiles and generous hearts.  Baba Elliot is also a pastor, and he alternates between leading the Sunday service at GGA and leading a service at his church in the city.

 

Since it’s 4:00 pm, I can also hear the sounds of Muslim prayers being broadcast across the valley where we live.  There is a big Muslim mosque up on the hill, and five times a day their very effective sound system sputters on and loud prayers are sung in some unidentifiable language. 

 

Dan is off driving 7 of his preschool teachers to a week of training in a town about 2.5 hours Northwest of here.  He is the “principal” of two preschools at the moment.  One is the larger preschool that has an enrolment of over 65 children, and employs 4 Zulu teachers and 3 GGA volunteers, and the other is a small preschool farther down in the same valley.  The second was started by a Zulu lady with no training, just a heart for the little ones in her community.  GGA began helping her last year by purchasing some supplies, and paying for the rental of a small room in the community centre.  Dan drives down to the school twice a week to bring hot meals and bread for the kids, and is also taking this teacher for her first level of training this week.  The hope is that GGA will soon begin building a new school for these kids so that more children can attend.  Dan is really enjoying his work with the teachers and with the little ones.  This week he will be teaching a class while the regular teachers are away!  Some of the kids don’t speak much English yet, so this should be an interesting challenge.  They do know how to shout “Teacha!!” at the top of their little lungs though, followed by a rapid stream of Zulu, and they love to sing the typical English preschool songs.

 

My work lately has been varied.  I am continuing to work on funding proposals, I coordinate registrations and transportation to training sessions and workshops, I put together orders for medical supplies for our community care workers, and I order school uniforms and soccer uniforms for kids who are sponsored by GGA.

 Last week I had the task of shopping for all the supplies for the communal kitchen and bathrooms that are just being built beside our house.  We are lucky to have our own small kitchenette and bathroom, but the other volunteers that will live here at the outreach centre will have their own sleeping rooms, but will share a communal cooking area.  This is a great plan in theory, but in reality, the communal areas are far from finished at this point, and will probably take several months yet.  There is another new volunteer arriving later today, and she will also be using our kitchen and bathroom for the foreseeable future!  Of course, the building manager here at the farm claims that the kitchen is “ready”.  This means the 4 walls are up, there is electricity, and a brand new stove is plugged in and functional.  However, there is still a dirt floor, no sink or cupboards, and no door or windows!  So, I was told to go out and buy dishes, pots, pans, and everything needed to stock a kitchen, but there is no kitchen to put all the supplies in!  Oh well…at least the shopping was fun!

 

We’ve had 3 uncommonly cold days in a row now, and once again dug out the jeans and sweaters that I had hoped not to need.  Some say that fall is beginning early this year, however, the forecast for the next few days is back to warm and sunny.  We have been told that there’s been more rainfall in the 7 weeks that we’ve been here than is usual for the entire year!  And on a farm that means mud and more mud!

 

I will close for today with a humorous farm story.  Since the cows roam freely here, we often have a cow or two walking across our front porch.  The other day one of the guys had been painting the steel pillars on our porch with thick, blue oil based paint, and had left to go on a coffee break.  When he returned, he found a large clump of cow’s hair stuck to the pillar he had been painting and a trail of blood across the porch!  Apparently a poor cow had swished its tail a little too enthusiastically and had gotten it stuck to the wet paint.  It then must have pulled hard, and lost the entire end of its tail along with some skin!  You would think that this incident would deter this cow from hanging out on our porch, but no such luck!

 

Time to go and make supper so that the new volunteer (coming from the US) will have something to eat when she arrives.